Fireworks

One would think that a beautiful and innocent, safeguarded and practiced set of celebratory fireworks could do no harm to any person. I believed this were the case, that was until our nearly two-year-old daughter experienced them at the Magic Kingdom.

The sounds sent shock waves throughout her entire body. As the show began she buried her head in her dads shoulder and began to cry. At first we thought she may get through it—that was when the real crying started. Crocodile tears streamed from her face and I begged to take her indoors. We found the closest covered area and headed toward it. All the while she continued to crawl up our necks, weeping, scared, and wanting a refuge that we couldn’t give her until we found a haven. As we entered a building (one with a singing Martian at a piano) she could still feel the booms as she clung close. I’m imagining that each boom was reminding her of her own personal terror and she would begin to cry again.

That was when my husband, a person who often connects his own life with that of the “other” says something that caused my heart to break in two. He said, “can you imagine being a parent in Israel—an innocent family with small children like ours who cry because of the booms overhead—and being the parents have no haven?”

No.

I can’t imagine.

I don’t even want to subject my child to harmless fireworks. I can’t explain why they are so loud but I can draw her away from them.

Some parents have nowhere to go.

No political statements are resounding in this blog, just a mother’s heart who prays that children in our world could sleep peacefully, without bombs and machine fire. I pray for peace, some how, some way, somewhere God help the parents who shield the babies from things they cannot run away from.